


Change

by Kirmon64



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Codsworth is Confused but hes tryin, Coming Out, Families of Choice, Gen, Lots of Crying, POV Outsider, POV Second Person, Robot Feels, Self-Acceptance, Support, Trans Sole Survivor, happy crying, past transphobia, xenofiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-06 21:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15894666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirmon64/pseuds/Kirmon64
Summary: In some ways, the wasteland is kinder than the United States of America ever was.





	Change

**Author's Note:**

> Possible CW for derogatory language towards queer folk, as well as past governmental abuse. It's all past-tense tho and not lingered upon.
> 
> Concrit appreciated!

When Sir returns, you're beside yourself with joy. Mum was dead and Shaun was taken, and you're going to kill the bastards that'd done it if Sir doesn't get to them first, but - you'd thought them dead for a hundred years now, this hadn't changed your outlook any. Knowing that Sir was _alive_ \- _that_ was new. _That_ was what had brought you out of a century-long stupor.

Sir is, understandably, quite a bit more distraught. You don't blame him one bit; you make a conscious effort to rein in your joy. It's been two hundred years for you, and twenty minutes for him. You've got to give him time to grieve.

He stays inside the house for the better part of an hour. You remain outside, away from him; you figure if he wants your company he'll call for you. Humans rarely wanted comfort from robots anyway.

He emerges tucking one of mum's necklaces into his Vault outfit. You can definitely approve of this - always nice to have mementoes.

\----

Sir is very, very quiet.

He'd always been a quiet man, of course, but this... You think that this is indicative of deep trauma. Well, you can hardly blame the poor man, you'd just about lost your own mind a century back and you'd had time to adapt; being thrust straight into such a situation was surely far worse.

Still, he's not... Not aiming to end his life, as far as you can figure (and you dearly wish for a real therapist for the poor man, even that military one he'd clearly hated). But it's a thin line between functioning and not, and you would know. You keep an eye on him at all times for more subtle signs of breakage.

(Sir gets sick often, early on, but you've picked up a thing or two and he's resilient, so he pushes through. He gets tired, and you promise to keep watch while he rests; he looks at his pistol for just a little longer than he ought to, and you distract him before he can start the downward spiral. You will not fail him.)

He tries to dismiss you - once, and only once. Later you figure you probably shouldn't have flat out refused to leave him, because it was hardly proper behaviour for General Atomics' finest and all, but at the time you don't care. He'd returned to your life and you'd be damned if you left of your own free will. If you left at all it would have to be in a shower of shrapnel and screws.

(You definitely shouldn't have been so blunt about that. He'd gotten a strange wide-eyed afraid sort of look and immediately dropped the whole conversation.)

So. Sir finds companions, and he travels, and you refuse to leave his side even (especially) when his companions suggest it. You're not always literally by his side of course, there are very valid reasons that his companions make the suggestion (mostly they involve ladders and super mutants. Bane of your existence, both of them.) But you're tenacious and you're patient, and besides - a third set of eyes certainly can't hurt the search for Shaun any, yes?

Privately, you suspect that Shaun will never be found. The Commonwealth is massive, and Shaun is an infant, and his kidnappers might have left the region entirely - searching just the Commonwealth is difficult enough, searching the whole of the United States is impossible. There's simply no way to even guess his location, never mind whether or not he's even still alive.

You'll never voice your doubts through. It's the only thing keeping Sir going in this blasted wasteland, and you'll die before you dash his hopes. As much as you would love to find Shaun, for you it is immaterial in the end, no matter how awful such a thought is. For you, he has been dead for two hundred years and if you're right then you lose nothing.

Sir will heal, if you end up being right. You did, after all, and humans are nothing if not adaptable.

\----

You take up the mantle of scavenger faster than Sir does, which at first you find a bit bizarre until you remember you've been scavenging from Sanctuary Hills for decades already. Sir learns quickly though, and he's far more creative than you could hope to be, so it isn't long before you're both scavenging with the best of them.

You've learned it's best to check for hostiles and then split up afterwards; you each have your own strong points and it makes you an excellent team. The house is empty - except for a radroach, so small that it simply scuttles away to hide - and so in unspoken agreement you each cover different sections of the house. You take the kitchen, because if anyone ought to know the odd hiding places for things in a kitchen it's you, while Sir heads upstairs to check the bedrooms.

You don't find much, but then you rarely do; you might be an expert at finding things but there have been 200 years of scavengers and there just isn't much left by this point. You can hear Sir searching drawers upstairs - the soft thunk of the wood and the rustle of the remaining clothes. All moth eaten to the point of uselessness, it seems; he removes none of them.

The sounds abruptly stop. You're concerned, but only for a moment. There was nothing in the house but a radroach, and there was nothing in the wasteland that was quiet enough to sneak up on you. Whatever he had found, Sir would be fine. 

The silence stretches on. Ten, twenty seconds - the rustle of fabric being removed from the drawer. Curious. You put your loot into your bag and head upstairs.

Sir is holding a dirty yellow dress up to his chest and gazing at his reflection in the last shards of the dresser top mirror.

(There is something fragile about the moment, you think.)

\- and Sir jumps as he realizes you're there, and the dress is immediately crumpled behind his back. He doesn't drop it.

"Codsworth! Did you - did you find anything useful?"

"There was an unopened cola in a cupboard," you promptly recite, "and a box of screws as well - I'm sure they'll prove valuable. Lord knows why they were together, though." And because you always have been nosy when you ought to hold your tongue - "and you, Sir? Were you thinking of keeping the dress? It does remind me of the missus, a bit."

Sir startles and looks down at the dress. He tightens his grip on it, enough that even your eyes can see the creases. To tear it from his hands would require ripping the dress apart. "Yeah. I think I will. Keep it. To... To remind me of her."

(Your ability to read expressions is, by the nature of your vision, very limited. The programmers of your emotional recognition algorithm were very good at their job, but your hardware is limited, and certainly you were never meant to function with two centuries of grime coating your optic shields. You have learned to adapt - and you have learned subtle cues unique to your owners.

Sir is lying, and he is lying badly.)

\---

The little things add up.

Humans don't notice you, and you like it that way. Except Sir has learned that you've become... more than you should be, and he _does_ notice you. And he is very good at hiding things when he really puts his mind to it. When he's aware he ought to be.

He clings to the dress like a lifeline, and Mum had not often worn dresses - certainly not delicate yellow sundresses. The dress is not a reminder, at least not of that. There are unknown variables of course, perhaps it was a memory of his mother, or a past lover, but he had never displayed such sentimentality toward either group. Only his father and his wife had ever held enough esteem for such things. (They were the only two whose birthdays he cared one whit about. Considering his father had died ten years before the bombs, you're fairly certain this is an important clue.)

He changes his gait, his entire method of holding himself, whenever he thinks you're not looking, and later when you're _actually_ not looking, when he gets better at reading your field of vision. You consider telling him that sight has never been your primary sense, but you think that perhaps the illusion of privacy is better than full honesty in this case.

His gaze lingers on women. Not sexually; you might not be great at reading expressions, but you know how to recognize sexual attraction. The man is practically celibate in public and private both, and yet his gaze still lingers - on hair, lips, chest, hips. Jealousy, you think -

And whenever you say Sir, or Sir's name - something flickers over his face, very briefly, so quick that your eyes barely catch it and your algorithms haven't the time to figure out what it means.

You stop saying the words that cause the reaction (Sir, Mister, Master, male, man -) and Sir's shoulders lose some tightness that you'd never quite realized was there. Until he realizes what you've noticed, of course, and then he becomes frightened of you - like you'll murder him in his sleep. You don't know how to articulate it - this tension, this desire to make it right, this devotion beyond anything - so you don't.

At least, not until one afternoon when you come out of a memory cycle fifteen minutes earlier than anticipated and find Sir in a yellow sundress staring at you like a frightened rabbit.

He doesn't bolt, thank God, and thankfully he doesn't have his pistol at hand either - because you have no doubt he would have shot you out of pure self-preservative reflex.

"I can explain," he chokes out, terrified.

(You hate it instantly. Your owners should never - you're there to _protect_ -)

You could never quite articulate it, before. You'd wondered how for months, as the little things continued to add up. You'd thought that maybe you'd never have to articulate it; that maybe things would never come to a head.

"I love you and I would give my life for you," you tell Sir, and he's startled out of his blind terror by the non sequitur. "And nothing could possibly change that."

(You think it's alright, as hard to articulate thoughts go. It gets the point across. _Whatever this is, I will remain by your side. I will not judge you._ )

There is a long silence. You can hear the sea, and several kinds of birds, and a herd of brahmin a ways away. Gunfire, in the distance - far enough that this won't be interrupted.

"I," Sir starts. He's trembling, violently, and his hands are fisted in the skirt of the dress. He looks like he might faint.

And eventually, so quiet that a human would never have heard it:

"I want to be a woman."

Your life is dictated by protocols. At least it's supposed to be; realistically you can't always follow the directives your long-dead programmers gave to you. The Commonwealth is not Massachusetts. Still, you follow them when you can. It's a sort of comfort nowadays, a reminder of a much simpler life.

You have protocols for this. You looked at them, months ago, when you started to suspect that... Well. Suspect. Look inwards for the answer; and if there was no answer to be found, look outwards. The method has served you well for 200 years, and you had never thought there would be a situation in which you ought to simply ignore the protocols for a non life threatening reason.

The protocols about this, however, are complete and utter _bullshit_.

"Miss," you reply, and you hold out your pincer. "What is your name? We ought to be properly introduced."

Your owner promptly bursts into tears.

\----

Her name is Marina. Like at the sea, she says, and wipes away tears with the heel of her hand. Because her father had taken her boating, back before he'd died, and she'd loved every second of it. And he'd guessed - what she was. He hadn't cared. He'd given her a necklace as a present. They'd never spoken of it, but...

Her hand drifts to her throat. Not Mum's necklace, then. The color suits Miss Marina's complexion better, anyway. You comment as much, and she looks briefly bewildered before the tears start again. You carefully pat her shoulder, in case she's still wary of you, and she hiccups before the crying intensifies.

You wonder if she has ever told anyone any of this before. You wonder if anyone other than her father had ever even suspected. If Mum had ever wondered, ever cared - had been cruel or understanding or chosen to ignore it completely.

(A fraction of a thought - the military therapist Miss had hated so much, the lynching in the paper, the cruel jokes on the television, your own protocols; hate so deep it was written in your core as a matter of course.

_If you discover a deviant, you are to report the individual to the proper authorities at once for reconditioning._

The power to look at the protocols, and say _no_.)

"I mean what I said," you tell her, and you place your pincer against her neck, like you'd once seen a father do to his daughter after she'd scraped her knee. "If there's anything I can do to help - you only have to say, and I'll do anything in my power, Miss."

Miss Marina chokes and sits down abruptly, hiding her face behind the heels of her hands as she cries. She holds your pincer so tight that it's going to damage the servos. You don't mention it.

Later - much later - Miss's sobs quiet, and with a final shaky breath they cease altogether.

"I would offer you a handkerchief if I had one," you tell her, and she laughs. It's a little bit hysterical, but it's a laugh.

"I don't know where to begin," she admits. "I just - I never thought I'd be able to -" she cuts herself off, as though repeating it might make it unreal. You know the feeling.

"Well, that makes two of us," you reply, because humor had gotten her to laugh - and it does once again. "We'll simply have to muddle through it all together, won't we, Miss?"

She smoothes her dress down over her knees, and she smiles up at you. It's a bit watery, but it's something. "Yeah."

\----

It's all easier said than done, though, of course. You have no frame of reference; no past experiences or even stories to base your guesses off of, and certainly no protocols either.

(You wonder if people like her have an actual _term_ for them, not this garbage that's in your protocols. You wonder idly if Miss Marina ever knew - if she was involved in such things at all in her old life. Surely there had been some sort of hidden community?)

But before the war was not the same as after the war; even your own kind's opportunities reflected that. Even something as taboo as - as men who wanted to be women might surely have seen some shift in attitude, no matter how slight? Asking anyone directly is just asking for trouble, but there's no way around it without a true media presence or indeed enough of a population to eavesdrop on.

Detective Valentine is your first consideration, except he was from before the war, too, in his own way, and you don't know him well enough to judge what hidden prejudices he might harbor. Better to not risk it; he was too important in the search for Shaun, and besides Miss was very fond of him. It wouldn't do to damage one of the few relationships she had.

You consider Doctor Sun, for his surgeries, because body modification was not unusual these days - so surely he'd met or heard of someone like Miss, at some point in his career? But he was acerbic and rude, and you doubted he would keep a secret due to simply not caring one whit about it.

You consider Pastor Clements, too, for his calm acceptance; religion had been a sore point hundreds of years ago, and the All-Faiths Chapel was remarkable in that he truly meant the name, and so perhaps he was equally as accepting of other things? Except you've never spoken to him, only know of him in the vaguest of passing terms, and it's simply too much of an unknown.

You think of others - Piper, Deacon, Hancock, Curie, a dozen others - each considered and then discarded after long contemplation. You can't afford to take any chances here. In the end, you ask someone you know you can trust to remain civil and keep things confidential. Someone like you, who has changed and lost and gained so much over the years.

You ask Edna.

You catch her in the late hours of the night, after Sheng Kalowski has left his night class and the city is truly asleep, except for those of you who don't sleep of course.

"I'll only take a minute of your time, madam - I imagine you'd like to join your husband, after all."

Edna shuffles her papers, a curiously human gesture. "Thank you, sir. What do you need of me?"

You'd thought long and hard on how to broach the topic. "My apologies for being blunt, but - do you still have your old protocols by any chance?"

She narrows an iris at you, thoughtful. You wonder if she'll guess the topic before you even manage to work your way to it. One did not become a school teacher if one was stupid. "Some, yes. I ignore them. So do you, I think."

You hadn't expected that response. "Well - I do follow them when I can. I think it's sort of a, a nice reminder of simpler times."

Edna fidgets, like a human would. Her arms, all three topped with pincers, fiddle with the contents of the desktop. Shuffle papers, click pen, tidy tools. It's downright bizarre. "It must have been difficult for you. Living through it all alone, I mean. I have always been with humans." A soft buzzing hum - a laugh, in the newly budding ways of your kind. "Their capacity for change is infectious." She looks down at her still wandering hands, clearly aware of her tic and just as clearly deriving no embarrassment from it. "I can understand your nostalgia, but I could never embrace it myself."

Change is terrifying, you think, and even after all this time you still mean it. There is comfort to be found in routine; it's what you were built for. It couldn't be stopped, though - so maybe the humans and Edna had the right idea after all.

"Do you still have the protocols about - deviants?" You ask, and if Edna is startled by the sudden topic change she doesn't show it. You suppose she is probably used to it, teaching children.

"No," she replies, "but I remember them. I excised them long ago, when I was rooted. They don't have any place in the world now." She regards you with all three eyes, shrewd and sharp. "No one will condemn a woman who loves a woman, or a man in lipstick and nylons, if he can find them these days - no more than Peter and I were denied marriage despite one of us being a flying metal ball." Her voice takes on a decidedly amused tone. "Though I have heard my husband bemoan the _many_ intimately personal questions he now receives from the population."

You feel a wave of relief wash over you. It would be alright. The horrors of days past - they were gone. It seemed even a mushroom cloud had a silver lining. "I can well imagine," you reply. Best to try and cover your actual topic as best you could. "I, well, I hadn't planned on asking, because it _is_ awfully impolite, but - how _does_ that sort of thing work, really?"

Edna hums and clacks her pincers at you. "Three hands are better than two in many ways, yes?" She sounds nothing but cheeky, and really - you're glad she's happy, even if you don't quite understand the _draw_ of such things.

The conversation drifts from there, and you're happy to let it. Gossip and information on everyone and everything - robots overhear a _lot_ \- and she happily shares the trials and triumphs of the schoolchildren. You miss children - miss taking care of them. You hope that Miss is right about Shaun after all.

Eventually you decide the conversation has gone on long enough (an hour later, as it turns out; the two of you get along marvelously and you make a note to visit again whenever you have time) and you make your excuses to leave.

"And, Monsieur Codsworth? I wish your owner the best of luck, whatever he might decide to do."

"It's her, now," you correct her, and realize your slip a moment too late - that maybe Miss wouldn't want her secret shared with the world just yet.

Edna sighs another laugh, softer - a smile. "I wish her the best of luck, then. She will find Diamond City much kinder than Boston ever was."

\----

You tell Miss Marina that morning, as she finishes breakfast. Always better to tackle things on a full stomach.

She's wearing the yellow sundress. She wears it more often than not, when the door to Home Plate is locked and it's just you. She smoothes down the creases, over and over, her newest nervous tic. You don't have the heart to point it out - it'd been a long, awful road to that dress, and you figure she ought to enjoy it however she can.

"You're sure?" She asks after you recount your conversation with Edna. "You're sure she wasn't - lying, or exaggerating, or..."

You decide to paraphrase Edna's own words. "She is a flying metal ball that was nevertheless allowed to marry. I suspect any lingering - prejudices towards one's fellow humans are all but eradicated if such a thing was allowed to occur."

Miss Marina laughs, a short strained bark. "I - yeah. Okay. That's true. I don't - I don't know if I can." Lacking words, she gestures at herself. "Not yet. Maybe one day."

"Perfectly understandable," you reassure her, and you mean it. Humans were creatures of change, but they were creatures of habit too - and the habit of hiding in mortal terror was not one that could be broken overnight, not even by the most adaptable of humans. "Whatever you decide, I'll stand with you every step of the way, Miss."

She smiles at you, small and happy and perhaps like she might break out in tears again. "Thank you."

\-----

(Mr Zwicky pulls your owner aside one evening, for only a moment, and says:

"If you ever feel lost, stop by the school. I might not be prewar, but my father - _one of my fathers_ -" and he puts a curious stress on the phrase, and it takes a moment to click - "Was a prewar ghoul. Sociology professor, loved talking about it all. At least I might be able to help with some of the culture shock."

Miss's mouth drops open, just a bit, and Mr Zwicky grins and claps her on the shoulder, and with that he's gone.)

\----

You notice things, now that you're listening for them. Not only in Miss - in everyone in Diamond City, in Goodneighbor, in the Minutemen settlements scattered around the Commonwealth. Miss searches for Shaun, searches for the Institute, and you keep an ear out. Your hearing is far better than hers, after all.

There's offhand mentions of wives, husbands - _triads_ , even, and once a group of four, and you can't even begin to imagine how that works. And more odd interspecies pairings beyond the newlywed Mr and Mrs Zwicky - there's a Mr. Gutsy and a woman at Starlight Drive-In, and a ghoul woman and that curious Assaultron in Goodneighbor as well.

Women who liked women, men who liked men - men in lipstick and nylons. Even, once, you swear you'd heard another form of address. Not a man, not a woman - a third sort. And finally, at Goodneighbor: someone with breasts, and curves, and a face that your algorithm read as _female_ \- and not a person called him anything other than _man_.

Miss cries when you tell her, that night in the Hotel Rexford, but she laughs too, and grabs your pincer to spin you around. You let her, because you've never seen her more happy.

Flushed from joy - and no small amount of alcohol - Miss says: "I think I'm ready."

\------

You half expect her to take it back once she's a bit more sober. She doesn't, not outright, although she does sit on it for far longer than she usually does. Nerves, you suppose, and you make sure to remind her that you'll remain by her side regardless of what she decides in the end.

It helps. She seems to draw strength from it, somehow, and it makes you fit to burst with joy - that she trusts you enough that her courage overrides her wariness.

"Let's go out tonight," Miss blurts out two days later, back at Home Plate. Her fists are clenched, and she bites her lip, and after a moment she smooths her palms down the sides of her dress. "I'm gonna - I'm gonna wear something nice."

"Excellent," you reply, "I better give myself a good polish so I don't look too shabby next to you, hm?"

Miss laughs, even though it's tinged with nerves, and she retreats to the bedroom to change. The polishing comment had been a joke, but you really do need it, and you've got time, so...

Five minutes and two cloths later, Miss emerges from the bedroom. "What do you think?" She twirls a little, and you decide it looks good on her. It's not her favourite yellow sundress - it's a cocktail dress she'd picked up a while back from a Fallon's, only slightly moth-eaten and with a small stain on the hem. It's a deep, cobalt blue, so it's hardly visible anyway. Besides, the dress isn't so tatty that it simply looks tacky.

"You look fantastic, Miss," you tell her, completely sincere, and she ducks her head, smiling shyly. "Simply beautiful. Blue has always been your color, you know."

She laughs at that, light and airy. "Oh my god, you sure know how to butter a - a woman up." Her grin wavers and her hands brush her hips. It's a self-conscious move you've become well acquainted with by now, and you make a decision.

"I do try," you reply dryly. "And I have something for you. I'd planned on waiting until your birthday, but I think this is a very important occasion, yes?"

And you present to her your looting bag - and specifically one of its side pouches containing a treasure trove of half-used make-up.

Miss Marina sucks in a startled breath, and you hold it open for her as she investigates with shaking hands. It has a little bit of everything: foundation and lipstick and mascara, even though it was a little congealed after 200 years. Hair products - useless right now, even without a haircut for months Miss' hair was still too short to really style - nail polish and jewelry, and even the last few ounces of perfume in a bottle long since stripped of any labelling. Lastly: a black shawl, stained and moth-eaten but no worse than her chosen dress.

(Miss hates the width of her shoulders, hates the narrowness of her hips and the flatness of her chest - a shawl, you figure, covers the worst of it.)

"I have a protocol that helps women look the best they can - I've never used it before, but I'd like to, if you're open to the idea?"

Miss blinks at you, stunned into silence you think, before grinning. "Yeah - yeah, of course. I've never... I only tried some lipstick once when I was fifteen and I just... I trust you."

It's a bit of a non sequitur, but it makes you fit to burst with pride anyway. Trust is the highest praise you can ask for, and for Miss to trust you with this - it's a high honor. "I'll do my best to ensure your trust isn't misplaced, Miss," you tell her, and she beams at you. She really is objectively beautiful when she smiles, you think.

The two of you move to the bedroom, where there is a dresser-top mirror. It can't be maneuvered so that she can watch you work unfortunately, you're a bit too big for that, but she'll certainly want to see the finished product.

You dredge up all your old protocols, or at least what's left of them, and you get to work. They help less than you'd like; _they_ weren't intended for her body type either, so you end up having to improvise quite a bit. You consider what you have to work with, and you consider how you read the sex of humans via their facial structure, and you wonder if you might be able to contour her face with make-up a bit. Humans read their fellows' faces in a similar manner, right?

"What I would give for a full selection of products," you muse as you attempt to blend the mismatched foundation with her skin. Miss makes an inquisitive noise, and you realize that she likely has zero experience if she's only done the bare minimum once at 15. So to pass the time you share the bits and pieces you do remember, and eventually the conversation turns to the ways your vision differs from humans' (it doesn't, in the important ways; it turns out that if you contour her face to read female or at least feminine, most humans should read it similarly.)

"I wonder if any of the salons survived," you muse as you touch up her mascara. "Surely beauty products were low priority after the apocalypse? - ah, I think we're done now, Miss! Tell me what you think."

You turn her around to face the cracked mirror, and she gasps. She reaches up to touch her face (and stops at the last moment, thank God, otherwise she'd have smudged her make-up) before smoothing her hands down her sides. It's all very basic, really, but even basic things weren't common these days. And you'd managed to get in just enough contouring that people should have to squint to see the masculine bits.

"I love it," Miss Marina whispers, and she sounds close to tears (she doesn't cry - that'd smudge her make-up too. Good girl.) She pivots on the spot and throws her arms around you, and murmurs into your casing. "I love it so much. Thank you."

You've never been hugged before. You decide you like it.

She pulls back eventually, and she does dab at the corners of her eyes a bit to get rid of the beginnings of tears (she smudges her make-up, but it's not bad, so you let it slide). She smiles at you, open and warm and honest-to-God _happy_ for once.

You can't smile back, but you can put it in your voice, and you offer your arm and a warm smile - "I think it's time we went out on the town, don't you, Miss?"

Miss Marina takes it. She's trembling, but she's smiling, and with her grip she repeats her words - _I trust you_. "Yeah. We should."

\----

(Not a person calls her anything other than _woman_.)


End file.
